Oracle will no longer issue public updates, including bug and security fixes, for Java 7 after this month.

The announcement on the Oracle Secuirty website says that after April 2015, Oracle will not post further updates of Java SE [Standard Edition] 7 to its public download sites, noting:

“Customers who need continued access to critical bug fixes and security fixes as well as general maintenance for Java SE 7 or older versions can get long-term support through Oracle Java SE Support. The process of migrating users from Java 7 to Java 8 through the auto update feature is expected to take place after the January 2015 CPU release."

Java SE 8 was released a year ago in March 2014, but many users haven’t yet upgraded. If you have applications based on Java 7, you’ll need to either upgrade or find a way to mitigate future code-level vulnerabilities without fixes from Oracle.

Meanwhile, the final public Critical Patch Update that includes updates for Java 7 was released on Tuesday by Oracle, with 14 new security fixes for Oracle Java SE among the 98 new fixes across a wide range of product families, as Eric Maurice explains on the Oracle Security blog. The other products with fixes include Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and MySQL.

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